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British Journal of Management, Vol. 24, S31–S47 (2013)

DOI: 10.1111/1467-8551.12010

It takes Two to Tango? Understanding the

Co-production of Public Services by
Integrating the Services Management and
Public Administration Perspectives
Stephen P. Osborne and Kirsty Strokosch
University of Edinburgh Business School, 29 Buccleuch Place, Edinburgh EH8 9JS, Scotland, UK
Corresponding author email: Stephen.Osborne@ed.ac.uk

We propose an important theoretical development for our understanding of the

co-production of public services. It combines the insights from both public administration
and services management theory to produce a novel typology of co-production. This
clarifies its role at the operational and strategic levels, as well as its potential for
transformational change in public services. Understanding co-production in this way
provides a basis through which to explore a whole range of dimensions of co-production
that were previously undifferentiated.

Introduction of social care in the UK through self-directed

This paper is an important contribution to devel-
oping our theoretical appreciation of the
co-production of public services. Through theo-
retical combination it enriches our conceptualiza-
tion of co-production in a way that pushes
forward our understanding of this significant
strand of public policy and public services deliv-
ery. The theoretical, policy and practice implica-
tions of this are suggested below and then
explored further in the conclusions to the paper.
Co-production is an important strand of the
current public services reform agenda across the
world. In the UK (both as an entity and within its
constitutive devolved nations) it has been argued
to have the potential to improve the efficiency and
effectiveness of public services by both the UK
Government Cabinet Office (Horne and Shirley,
2009) and by influential public policy ‘think tanks’
such as Demos (Parker and Heapey, 2006) and
NESTA (Boyle and Harris, 2009). It is also at the
core of other significant public policy agendas
that are pushing forward public services reform,
such as the commitment to transform the delivery
support and the ‘personalization’ of social care
delivery (e.g. Scottish Government, 2010).
Outwith the UK, co-production has also been
articulated as a key response to the need for public
services reform by, amongst others, the OECD
(OECD Directorate for Public Governance and
Territorial Development, 2011), the World Bank
in relation to the Developing World (Joshi and
Moore, 2002, 2004) and the Australian Govern-
ment (Parliament of Australia, 2011).
The present paper is the theoretical outcome of
a larger project that has been examining such
co-production in the context of the planning and
delivery of social care services to asylum seekers in
Scotland. This larger study explores three empiri-
cal questions: the extent to which co-production
is dependent upon citizenship; if co-production
can act as a conduit to build social inclusiveness
and citizenship; and if individual service user
co-production is a prerequisite for co-production
and partnership working, or not, by public
service organizations (and especially by third
sector organizations). In particular the study has
examined the association between the service

© 2013 The Author(s)

British Journal of Management © 2013 British Academy of Management. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd,
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S32
relationship and the public policy agenda for co-
production and social inclusion.
The present paper proposes a new framework
for understanding the co-production of public
services, as part of the growing theoretical devel-
opment of the field of public management (Ferlie,
Hartley and Martin, 2003). It draws together two
streams of literature on co-production – from the
services management (Gronroos, 2007; Johnston
and Clark, 2008; Normann, 1991; Vargo, Maglio
and Archpru Akaka, 2008; Venetis and Ghauri,
2004) and the public administration (Alford,
1998; Bovaird, 2007; Brudney and England, 1983;
Parks et al., 1981; Pestoff, 2006; Pestoff, Osborne
and Brandsen, 2006; Whitaker, 1980) perspec-
tives. These have developed in parallel since the
1970s with no attempts until recently to explore
what insights might develop from their integra-
tion. This is a potential avenue for the develop-
ment of public management theory that has been
raised by several authors in a recent important
collection of papers on co-production (Bovaird
and Loeffler (2012) and Porter (2012) in Pestoff,
Brandsen and Verschuere, 2012). However, this
present paper is the first to explore this avenue
in depth and to derive substantial conceptual
advancement from it. As such it provides sig-
nificant conceptual development of public man-
agement theory that furthers our understanding
of the role, opportunities and limitations of
co-production in public services delivery.
In brief, this approach differentiates three
modes of co-production, at the operational, stra-
tegic and service levels. These are denoted the
‘consumer’, ‘participative’ and ‘enhanced’ modes
of co-production. For researchers, the conceptual
work presented here provides powerful concep-
tual tools to assist with the description, analysis
and evaluation of different forms of co-
production in public services and with predictions
about their impact. For policy-makers and prac-
titioners, this approach also offers a way to under-
stand the distinctive challenges that different
forms of co-production present and their implica-
tions for public policy design and implementation
and for public services management. Finally, for
service users, the approach highlights the skills
required by them to engage in the differing modes
co-production identified here.
Osborne (2010; Osborne, Radnor and Nasi,
2013) has identified a crucial flaw in contempo-
rary public management theory (particularly in
British Journal of Management © 2013 British Academy of Management.
S. P. Osborne and K. Strokosch
its ‘new public management’ (NPM) articula-
tion) in its overt concentration upon the mana-
gerial lessons from the manufacturing sector,
with its focus both upon discrete transactions
and singular outputs. He argues rather that
public management has considerable gains to
make by a consideration instead of the services
management literature (as discussed below) with
its focus upon ongoing relationships and service
outcomes. This paper takes this argument
forward in a significant strand of public policy
and argues that our understanding of co-
production is enhanced by this integration of
insights from the services management and
public administration literatures.
It is important at the outset to clarify some of
the limitations of the paper. First, it must be
emphasized that this is not a paper about the
co-production and the public policy formulation
process. This has been explored in more detail
elsewhere (Scott and Baehler, 2011). Rather it is a
paper about the implementation of public policy
and the delivery of public services – what Scott
and Baehler call the ‘responsive’ and ‘operational’
levels of public policy. Here we denote these two
domains ‘strategic’ and ‘operational’ respectively.
Second, the empirical context of this paper is
the experience of public services delivery in the
UK – and specifically the delivery of public serv-
ices to asylum seekers in Scotland. Its import
though, we would argue, is not bounded by this
geographical or service locus but has implications
for public services delivery across the globe.
Third, it is important to offer some core concep-
tual definitions at the outset, to clarify the reach
of the paper. By ‘public services’ we are referring
to services that are created through the public
policy process and regulated by (central or local)
government but which can be provided by a range
of ‘public service organizations’ (PSOs) in the
public, third and private sectors. The latter bodies
are those organizations engaged in delivering
public services to local people and communities.
Drawing upon Bovaird (2007, p. 847), co-
production is defined broadly as ‘regular, long-
term relationships between professionalized
service providers (in any sector) and service users
or other members of the community, where all
parties make substantial resource contributions’.
Beneath this over-arching definition, though,
lie differing discourses of co-production in the
public administration and services literature. The
© 2013 The Author(s)
It takes Two to Tango?
understanding and negotiation of these differing
discourses is at the heart of the unique contribu-
tion of this paper.
Finally it is also important to clarify that the
paper does not attempt to situate co-production
as a normative alternative to prevailing funding
or structural models used to deliver public serv-
ices, such as contractual or partnership models.
As we shall argue below, co-production in service
delivery can and/or will exist irrespective of what
structural or funding models are utilized. Once
the true nature of co-production is understood,
therefore, it is subsequently a matter of political
and strategic decision-making as to its relation-
ship to these structural models and mechanisms.
The structure of the paper is as follows. We
commence by exploring the place of co-
production within the public administration and
services management literatures. We then con-
sider how the insights from these literatures may
be integrated to present a more nuanced under-
standing of co-production. We conclude by
drawing out the conceptual and policy and prac-
tice implications of this approach.
Co-production: the public
administration perspective
As identified above, we are not concerned with the
public administration literature that explores
co-production in ‘upstream’ public policy formu-
lation, with its focus on the work of government
ministers and civil servants and their interactions
with citizens (see Scott and Baehler (2011) for a
detailed discussion of this). Rather we are con-
cerned with the implementation of public policy
and most specifically with the design, reform and
delivery of public services (as a means through
which to enact public policies agreed ‘upstream’
at the purely political level). There is a strong and
highly influential implementation literature on
co-production that originates from the seminal
work of Ostrom (1972) in the USA. She con-
tended that PSOs depended as much upon the
community for policy implementation and service
delivery as the community depended upon them.
This was the genesis of the concept of co-
production in public administration.
The public administration co-production litera-
ture subsequently developed predominantly in the
USA, Europe and Australia (inter alia, Alford,
© 2013 The Author(s)
British Journal of Management © 2013 British Academy of Management.
S33
1998, 2002; Bovaird, 2007; Brandsen and Pestoff,
2006; Brudney and England, 1983; Evers, 2006;
Frederickson, 1996; Levine and Fisher, 1984;
Parks et al., 1981; Pestoff, 2006; Pestoff, Brandsen
and Verschuere, 2012; Rosentraub and Warren,
1987; Sharp, 1980; Whitaker, 1980). Inevitably
the idea evolved as public administration theory
itself evolved – from the focus on policy imple-
mentation and the administration of services
(‘traditional’ public administration) through the
managerial and consumerist concerns of the NPM
era of the 1980s and 1990s and into the more
recent concerns of ‘digital governance’ and the
‘new public governance’ (Osborne, 2010).
Each of these approaches to the delivery of
public services had its own preoccupation. ‘Tra-
ditional’ public administration emphasized the
separation of politics and administration, with the
latter focusing upon the relationship between citi-
zens and public services and their mediation
through professionals (Lynn, 2001). Often in this
approach public administrators were seen as
‘nefarious’ (Lipsky, 1968), thwarting the will of
citizens for greater influence upon the design and
delivery of public services (Vroom and Yetton,
1973). Co-production (Ostrom, 1972) was thus
articulated as a way through which public services
could be delivered with ‘the maximum feasible
participation of residents of the areas and
members of the groups served’ (Judd, 1979, p.
303). In the USA this linked into the development
of the New Public Administration movement
(LaPorte, 1971), whilst in the UK it was most
associated with the idea of ‘public service orienta-
tion’ (Stewart and Clarke, 1987).
The NPM, by contrast, emphasized the
resource constraints of public services delivery
and the need for a managerial approach to their
delivery, recasting citizens as the ‘consumers’
rather than ‘clients’ of public services (Hood,
1991). Although initially concerned primarily
with adopting a managerial approach both to the
allocation of scarce public resources and to public
services delivery the NPM subsequently came to
be associated (in Anglo-American countries at
least) with the concern to use competitive markets
to reform the delivery of public services and it
re-cast the role of the citizen in public services
delivery as that of the self-interested consumer
(Alford and Hughes, 2008; Roberts, 2004). In
this context, co-production became associated
primarily, and controversially, with the concept of
S34
‘consumerism’ and with contrasting views upon
its effectiveness (Barnes, 1995; Potter, 1994;
Powell et al., 2010).
Latterly the frameworks of digital governance
and the new public governance have reformulated
public services delivery in an ‘open systems’
context (Scott, 1992). On the one hand, it is no
longer a case of exploring the top-down relation-
ship between public policy, PSOs and the recipi-
ents of public services. Emerging new technology
has offered service users potential routes to wrest
(some) control over public services from the
policy, administrative and managerial structures
(Bekkers et al., 2011; Dunleavy et al., 2006). On
the other hand, the fragmentation of public serv-
ices delivery in the post-modern state has put an
accent upon inter-, rather than intra-, organiza-
tional relationships for public services delivery
(Haveri, 2006). The new public governance
replaces public service organizations with public
service delivery systems, where the interaction of a
multiplicity of actors is required to achieve soci-
etal goals and to deliver public services – with the
emphasis being upon partnership and collabora-
tion1 as being, variously, an effective means with
which to lever new resources into the delivery of
public services, a holistic way in which to address
complex social needs and an instrument for
social inclusion (Osborne, 2010). In context,
co-production has again been re-formulated, this
time as a core element of the production of pre-
cisely such holistic and ‘joined up’ public services.
This evolution of public administration has had
import for the expectations, and conceptualiza-
tion, of service users in the planning and delivery
of public services. It has not been a ‘steady state’
concept but has evolved, portraying service users
as co-producers in different guises – as citizens/
clients, consumers, customers – and latterly
simply as ‘co-producers’. Thus, from being a con-
tested and fluid element of public administration,
co-production has now moved to occupy a central
position in it (Alford, 2009). It is the latter
conception of co-production within public admin-
istration that is of concern here.
Within the current discourse of public adminis-
tration, therefore, co-production challenges its
traditional orthodoxy where ‘public officials are
1
Salamon (2002) has estimated that approximately 95%
of federal public services in the US are delivered through
partnership arrangements.
British Journal of Management © 2013 British Academy of Management.
S. P. Osborne and K. Strokosch
exclusively charged with responsibility for design-
ing and providing services to citizens, who in turn
only demand, consume and evaluate them’
(Pestoff, 2006, p. 506; our emphasis). This public
administration literature on co-production subse-
quently discusses the ways in which service user
participation can be ‘added into’ the process of
service planning and production to improve the
quality of these services. This latter day public
administration discourse (itself increasingly refor-
mulated as ‘public management’) still conceives of
public services as ‘goods’ to be designed, planned
and produced primarily by service professionals –
but where service users can be invited into the
process by these professionals even if the public
goods are still consumed (relatively) passively by
service users. Co-production thus does not chal-
lenge the basic premises of public administration,
because it can only occur at the behest of, and
controlled by, service professionals (Brandsen
and Pestoff, 2006).
Co-production in this discourse is significantly
dissimilar conceptually (and in practice) from its
‘sister’ (or cousin?) within the services manage-
ment literature, below. The emphasis in public
administration is on joint working between two
parties that typically operate from different places
in the production process. One party is the pro-
fessional service delivery staff within government
departments and/or PSOs. Traditionally, of
course, the design and planning and the delivery
of public services would have been vertically inte-
grated within a government department, although
sometimes with third sector involvement (Parks
et al., 1981). Increasingly though the impact of
both the NPM and the new public governance has
been to separate design and planning (usually
undertaken by central or local government) from
delivery by PSOs within the public, private or
third sectors. Thus the role of the individual
service user is ‘simply’ to subsequently consume
the public service, unless invited into the service
planning process. In this model, co-production is
a design element to be ‘added on’ to service deliv-
ery, and which may enhance its design and plan-
ning by accessing the knowledge and experiences
of service users or improve the effective delivery of
the service (Pestoff, 2006). The central point in
this model is that co-production is something
external to the delivery of a public service that
needs to be designed into these services in order to
achieve specified desired outcomes.
© 2013 The Author(s)
It takes Two to Tango?
The most developed recent approaches to
co-production in public administration theory are
twofold. Bovaird (2007) posits a range of relation-
ships between service users and PSOs, depending
upon the respective role of each in the planning
and delivery of public services. This is a significant
conceptual development for co-production within
public administration for it clearly explicates the
range of roles and experiences service users might
inhabit – though only at the behest of service
professionals. Alford (2002, 2009) has also use-
fully explored the contingencies of co-production
in public services, in terms of the inducements and
sanctions used by public service professionals to
enable the process. For all this though, both
maintain the enduring perspective of public
administration upon co-production as an
optional element of the service delivery process,
arguing that ‘service users and their communities
can – and often should – be part of service planning
and delivery’ (Bovaird, 2007, p. 846; our empha-
sis). From this perspective, co-production is seen
as a normative, voluntary, good that should add
value to the public service production process, but
that is not intrinsic to it. As will be seen below,
this is a qualitatively different discourse to that
within the services management field.
Such normative conceptualizations of
co-production have often been associated with
efforts to improve democracy by placing service
users and communities at the heart of service
delivery decision-making processes, as discussed
above (see also Alford, 2002; Bovaird and
Loeffler, 2009). However, negative aspects of
co-production have also been discussed in the
public administration literature. Public service
providers, for example, can consider co-
production as time consuming and resource
intensive, diverting attention from the ‘real’ task
of effective service delivery, whilst concerns have
also been raised that including more participants
in the process of planning and delivering services
will not necessarily lead to a consensus and will
make it more difficult for appointed professionals
to provide leadership (Levine and Fisher, 1984).
Finally, service users need an appetite to
co-produce which, from the public administration
perspective, requires that they dedicate personal
time and energy to service production. A debate
exists as to whether they have either the time
or inclination for this (Osborne, Beattie and
Williamson, 2002).
© 2013 The Author(s)
British Journal of Management © 2013 British Academy of Management.
S35
If it has its limitations, nonetheless what this
public administration discourse on co-production
does articulate most strongly is a space for the role
of service users in the planning and design of
public services. Both Alford (2009) and Pestoff,
Brandsen and Verschuere (2012) are important in
the most recent discussions of this, which have
moved the debate considerably from initial con-
cerns of writers such as Ostrom (1972) and Sharp
(1980). Yet even so, this most recent work
still maintains a view of co-production as some-
thing to be consciously built into public services.
This basic assumption is challenged, however,
when one explores the conceptualization of
co-production within the service management
literature.
Co-production: the service
management perspective
As discussed above, the re-casting of public
administration as ‘public management’ in the
1980s and beyond (as part of the NPM move-
ment) was predicated upon the assumption that
public services delivery was not so much a process
of the administration of the rule of law but rather
one of the allocation of scarce economic resources
to meet societal needs. What is curious is that, in
addressing these managerial rather than adminis-
trative concerns, politicians, practitioners and
researchers alike turned to managerial theory
derived primarily from the manufacturing sector
and ignored the dedicated theory and literature on
services management – despite the fact that this
may well have unique insights to offer to the
understanding of public services management
(Osborne, Radnor and Nasi, 2013). It is true that
the ‘consumerism’ movement in public services
delivery of the 1990s drew heavily upon some ele-
ments of services management theory. However,
as others have argued, this approach was a partial
one that has sought to extract ‘the consumer’
from the overall service delivery process and that
failed to understand the totality and logic of this
process – and its implications for public services
delivery (Jung, 2010; Powell et al., 2010).
We argue here that the services management
literature can add valuable insights into our
understanding of co-production, because of the
central role that the latter concept plays within
the services literature. Consequently, it arguably
S36
provides a more accurate starting point for theo-
rizing about public services production – and in
combination with the public administration lit-
erature it can stretch our understanding of
co-production. Crucially, the services manage-
ment literature is not concerned with how to
‘enable’ or ‘build in’ co-production to the service
delivery process – what might be termed the
‘design’ imperative (Sangiorgi, 2012). Its basic
premise is that co-production is an essential and
inalienable core component of service delivery:
you cannot have (public) service delivery without
co-production. It is the essential and intrinsic
process of interaction between any service
organization and the service user at the point of
production of a service – what Normann (1991)
has termed ‘the moment of truth’ in services
provision.
Briefly,2 services management theory stems
from tripartite notions of inseparability, intangi-
bility and co-production (Gronroos, 2007). The
production and consumption of services are
inseparable because they are produced and con-
sumed simultaneously – rather than with produc-
tion and consumption being temporally and
spatially separated as in the case of manufactured
goods (Johnston and Clark, 2008). Thus, whilst
manufactured goods are produced in one place
(e.g. a factory), sold somewhere else (a shop) and
then consumed at a third site (perhaps in some-
one’s home), the production and business logic
for services is entirely different. Production and
consumption occur at the same time and often in
the same place, with service being their defining
feature. It is not the provision of a standardized
and pre-packaged product but rather a value
based interaction (Vargo, Maglio and Archpru
Akaka, 2008). A theatrical experience, a consul-
tation with a solicitor and a hotel stay are exam-
ples of such simultaneous inseparability of
production and consumption.
Services are also intangible. They are not con-
crete goods that can be physically moved and/or
consumed at a time of the consumer’s choosing
(such as a washing machine). Rather they are
intangible processes, with the issue of the subjec-
tive experience of the service delivery process by
the consumer being a key determinant of the
2
A more detailed exposition of services theory and its
application to public administration and public manage-
ment is found in Osborne, Radnor and Nasi (2013).
British Journal of Management © 2013 British Academy of Management.
S. P. Osborne and K. Strokosch
quality and performance of the service (Van Looy,
Gemmel and Van Dierdonck, 2003). The process
experience of a business consultancy by its client,
for example, is at least as important in its ‘perform-
ance’ as is the quality of the advice offered – indeed
some have even modelled this as a dramaturgical
process (Clark and Salaman, 1998).
Finally, and most significant in the context of
this paper, services are unavoidably co-produced
by the service staff and the service user. The expe-
rience of a service process is shaped primarily by
the expectations of the user, their active role in the
service delivery process and their subsequent
experience of the process. Service organizations
can only ‘promise’ a certain process or experience
– the actuality is dependent upon the Normann’s
(1991) ‘moment of truth’, where service user
expectations of a service collide with their experi-
ence of it (Magnusson, 2003; Venetis and Ghauri,
2004). A classic example of this would be the
experience of residential care by the interaction of
staff and service users in a residential home. The
expectations and personal characteristics and
actions of the residents of a residential home
produce the experience of that home as much as
do the actions of its staff.
In reality, of course, such elements are more of
a continuum than a steady state. Services such
as residential care and education are clearly
instances where the co-production is high, owing
to the fact that consumption and production take
place both at the same point in time and in the
same place, with direct face-to-face contact
between the service user and the service provider.
By contrast, they are rather lower for electronic
financial services, because production and con-
sumption occur through the medium of an
electronic interface that does not have the inter-
personal immediacy of face-to-face contact – in
this case, the co-production of a financial service
is essentially passive (inputting financial data on
yourself or choosing from a list of pre-set
options), mediated through a virtual interface.
Indeed key elements of mainstream services
theory are increasingly being challenged by the
virtual rather than real-time relationships of
e-services. Yet even such services do still exhibit
co-production and there is a growing literature
upon co-production within virtual service envi-
ronments (e.g. Gummerus, 2010).
Unlike much current public administration and
management literature, therefore, the services
© 2013 The Author(s)
It takes Two to Tango? S37

Table 1. A continuum of modes of co-production

Consumer Participative Enhanced

co-production co-production co-production

Consumer co-production results from the
inseparability of production and
consumption during the service encounter
and focuses upon the engagement of the
consumers at the operational stage of the
service production process in order to
balance their expectations and experience of
the service. The aim is user empowerment
Participative co-production results from the
intention to improve the quality of existing
public services through participative
mechanisms at the strategic planning and
design stage of the service production
process. These mechanisms include user
consultation and participative planning
instruments. The aim is user participation
Enhanced co-production results from
combining the previous operational and
strategic modes of co-production in order to
challenge the existing paradigm of service
delivery. The aim is user-led innovation of
new forms of public service

management literature emphasizes the interaction
between the service producer and the service user
and the interdependence between these two at the
operational level. The users’ contribution as a
co-producer during service production is not only
unavoidable but is also crucial to the performance
of a service and the impact of the service upon
them (Lengnick-Hall, Claycomb and Inks, 2000).
It is important to note that this approach to
co-production does not necessarily require user
involvement in the service planning process.
However, this can occur and is often termed ‘co-
creation’ and is linked to the service innovation
process. This is discussed further below.
If services theory has insights to offer to our
understanding of co-production, it also has limi-
tations. Services theory has no real understanding
of the political and policy context of public serv-
ices, nor of service production in the context of
unwilling or coerced service users (as in the case of
the criminal justice system, for example) or where
the desired outcomes of a service are multiple
and/or contested – as can be the case in a range of
child-care services (Osborne, 2010). However, a
novel conceptual combination of the public
administration and the services perspectives has
the potential to further our understanding of
the nature, process and limitations of the co-
production of public services. This is the intent of
the next part of the paper.
Integrating the public administration
and services management perspectives
Table 1 draws together the discourses on
co-production from the services management and
the public administration perspectives to produce
three modes of co-production. The first two take
an operational and strategic focus respectively to
clarify their differing contributions to our under-
standing of co-production in public services. The
third mode integrates insights from both to create
a new ‘enhanced’ mode of co-production. This
approach acknowledges the balance between
co-production in the strategic planning and
operational management of public services noted
by Alford (2009) whilst also accepting, from the
services literature, the inalienable role of
co-production in the delivery of public services at
the operational level. We denote these three
modes as consumer co-production (based in serv-
ices management), participative co-production
(based in public administration and public man-
agement) and enhanced co-production (that com-
bines elements of the two previous modes to
produce a third mode). These modes are now dis-
cussed below, with the weight of the discussion
focused upon enhanced co-production as the
genuinely original conceptual contribution of our
framework and which hence requires greater
explication.
Consumer co-production
As has been argued previously, in services theory,
the role of the consumer in a service is multiple: to
contribute to the production process, to simulta-
neously consume that service and to evaluate the
quality of the service. The act of service consump-
tion is the cornerstone of co-production, as it is
this action that results in the consumers’ contri-
bution to production at the operational level –
their expectations and experiences are central to
effective service delivery and to the outcomes of
the service. Service quality and performance exist

© 2013 The Author(s)

British Journal of Management © 2013 British Academy of Management.
S38
where these expectations and experiences collide
during the process of service co-production.
This first mode therefore focuses upon the
operational level of public services delivery and
conceptualizes co-production as an inalienable
component of public services production. This
acknowledges that it is involuntary and unavoid-
able on the part of both the service user and
the PSO. From this perspective, therefore, co-
production is not an issue of choice and design
but rather of the management, at the operational
level, of the relationships between the PSO and
the individual service user. Co-production is thus
not an add-on to the delivery of a public service
but is rather a core element of the effective man-
agement of public services on a day-to-day,
operational, basis – and a key determinant of both
their quality and performance. It must be empha-
sized that this goes beyond ‘simple’ consumerism,
as discussed above, and towards a more sophisti-
cated understanding of a public service as a
service delivery system (Vargo, Maglio and
Archpru Akaka, 2008). In this mode, therefore,
co-production becomes a profound restatement
of the public service management task as an inter-
active and systemic one where experience and out-
comes are negotiated between the service user and
the service delivery professional rather than one
dominated by the latter professionals alone. This
implies the empowerment of the service user
within the service production process, as a key
arbiter of service quality and performance.
Such user empowerment has of course been an
aspiration of public services reform for several
decades (Osborne, 1994; Skelcher, 1993). Con-
sumer co-production reformulates this ambition in
a manner both that understands it as a natural part
of the service production process and that offers
concrete approaches to its achievement. This, we
believe, is a qualitative step forward in making this
aspiration for individual user empowerment a
reality in public services by drawing on the lessons
from services management. What consumer
co-production does not do, however, is to consider
the needs of service users as a collectivity, to affect
public services at the strategic planning level or to
consider the needs of future service users.
Participative co-production
In the second mode, co-production is conceptual-
ized not in the individual consumption logic of
British Journal of Management © 2013 British Academy of Management.
S. P. Osborne and K. Strokosch
operational service delivery but rather at the stra-
tegic level of service planning. Such co-production
does not necessarily challenge the nature of opera-
tional service delivery, but rather affects the
design and planning of existing services at the
strategic level. The question is thus not ‘how can a
public service ensure that users’ expectations of
that service are met by their experience of it, and
how will this influence service performance?’
Rather it is ‘how can the current experience of a
public service by its users be utilized to design and
plan this service for the future?’ We should
emphasize that we do not argue that the public
administration discourse of co-production has
been solely concerned with this strategic level over
the decades. This is not the case. But rather that
it is the strategic element of this discourse that
has most to offer to a holistic model of the
co-production of public services.
Arnstein’s (1969) (see also Havassy and Yanay,
1990) ‘ladder’ of citizen participation is one
approach that might be used to explore the actu-
ality of this mode of participative co-production –
although it is not without its critics (Tritter and
McCallum, 2006). It recognizes that participation
in planning can in reality range from cosmetic and
limited forms of co-production (such as public
consultations where there is no commitment to
act) to forms where service users can have a direct
effect upon the direction of service development
(such as through being an active member of a
service partnership). This point has been pursued
further by Bovaird (2007) in his work.
A key distinction to be made here is between user
empowerment and user participation as the
desired intentions of co-production. Both have of
course been longtime goals of public services,
though with only limited achievement. User
empowerment is concerned with the ability of indi-
vidual service users to control their experience of a
public service and contribute to their own desired
outcomes. As such it is best approached through
the mode of consumer co-production. User par-
ticipation by contrast is concerned with the role of
the service user in participating in the public
service planning process in order that the public
service system can address their needs more effec-
tively in the future (Simmons and Birchall, 2005).
It is also seen as a route to other desirable social
outcomes, such as social inclusion (Beresford,
2001). This is the realm of participative co-
production. Inevitably these two concepts do
© 2013 The Author(s)
It takes Two to Tango?
overlap. User participation in public service plan-
ning can be enabled by user empowerment, whilst
user empowerment at the operational level can
flow from planning initiatives initiated by user
participation at the strategic level (Osborne,
Beattie and Williamson, 2002). What our app-
roach here achieves is to uncover and distinguish
the differing logics of these two processes. Only by
such conceptual clarity can we fully understand
both their integrity and their possible integration.
The latter point is returned in the next section.
It is also an issue of debate within this mode
as to whether an individual user has sufficient
power within service planning structures to
move beyond ‘tokenism’ to genuine engagement in
debate about the future direction of these services.
Other research (e.g. Osborne, Beattie and
Williamson, 2002, 2006) has suggested that indi-
vidual users may well require support from medi-
ating structures within civil society in order to
achieve this impact – such as user or community
groups or third sector bodies committed to sup-
porting the engagement (e.g. Councils for Volun-
tary Service in England or Third Sector Interfaces
in Scotland). This is an issue that requires further
exploration.
Enhanced co-production3
The previous two modes are, in a sense, an
integrated reformulation of the potential con-
tributions of the existing public administration
and services management perspectives, in order
to offer a more holistic understanding of co-
production, albeit within a relational framework.
Both occur within the existing framework of
public service delivery with an intention to
improve the efficiency and/or effectiveness of
these current arrangements – at either the indi-
vidual or service level. Enhanced co-production
is, though, a genuine conceptual advance. In this
third mode, consumer based mechanisms in
operational delivery of public services are com-
bined with participative ones at the strategic
3
It must be emphasized that the term ‘enhanced’ is not
used in any normative sense to suggest that this is a
qualitatively ‘better’ mode of co-production than the
previous two modes. This mode is ‘enhanced’ only to the
extent that draws on the previous two modes in a com-
binatory manner to create a new conceptual category of
co-production. Its opportunities, challenges and limita-
tions are discussed further below.
© 2013 The Author(s)
British Journal of Management © 2013 British Academy of Management.
S39
planning level to produce the potential for
transformational effects upon the public services
delivery system as a whole – user-led innovation of
new forms of public service delivery. This is not
about user empowerment within current service
paradigms or their participation in the planning
of future services within this paradigm. Rather it
is about challenging this service paradigm and,
potentially, transforming it entirely.
It could be argued that such a conceptualization
is simply a modality of the previous two modes
produced by arithmetic addition. We would
argue, however, that it is not simply such an addi-
tion but a geometric progression. Enhanced
co-production does not occur solely either at the
operational locus of consumer co-production or at
the strategic locus of participative co-production.
Both these exist within and impact upon the pre-
vailing paradigm of public services delivery.
Enhanced co-production uses this experience to
challenge this prevailing paradigm and (poten-
tially) transform the public services delivery para-
digm through transformational change – or what
has been termed elsewhere ‘total innovation’
(Osborne, Chew and McLaughlin, 2008). This is
an important conceptual development that identi-
fies for the first time the link between the
co-production of public services and the potential
for their transformational innovation – an oft-
asserted aim but one that to date has eluded clari-
fication of the mechanisms involved (Osborne and
Brown, 2011). With the enhanced co-production
mode, user-led innovation explicitly formulates
the role of service users as a driving force for
transformational innovation by combining their
operational level experience of the actuality of
public services delivery with their engagement at
the strategic level – but in this case not simply to
plan the development of existing services but
rather to challenge their overall design. Neither of
the previous modes of co-production above
implies such transformational innovation. They
are essentially ways to provide existing service
models more efficiently and/or effectively.
Enhanced co-production goes beyond this by inte-
grating co-production at the operational and stra-
tegic levels to transform service delivery and
co-create new processes and forms of public serv-
ices. This is the import of this unique formation of
co-production. In the private sector such transfor-
mational innovation through co-production
has often been termed co-creation (e.g. Payne,
S40
Storbacka and Frow, 2008; Prahalad and
Ramaswamy, 2004) and has been articulated as
the core process through which to achieve success-
ful sustainable performance in the marketplace
(Vargo, Maglio and Archpru Akaka, 2008).
Recent public policy discussion has begun to
assert such co-creation as a key objective in public
services delivery (for instance Bason, 2010;
Evamy, 2009). It is a concept, however, that is
significantly under-theorized in the public admin-
istration and public management literature and
lacking any genuine understanding of what this
might entail or how it might be achieved. Mulgan,
though himself a proponent of such an approach,
has argued that the ‘absence of sustained and sys-
tematic analysis [on user-led innovation and
co-creation] is holding back the practice of social
innovation’ (Mulgan, 2006, p. 159). Similarly
Osborne and Brown (2011) have called for greater
conceptual clarity on the nature and processes of
such user-led innovation and co-creation if we are
to drive forward the process of innovation in
public services. The approach articulated here, we
would argue, is a major contribution to producing
this much needed conceptual clarity and system-
atic analysis which offers real substance to the
desired outcome for public services reform and
renewal.
Thus within the services management litera-
ture, customization (Kristensson, Matthing
and Johansson, 2008), which equates to service
improvement through the ‘consumer co-
production’ mode identified above, might
improve the ‘operational fit’ of a service to the
individual needs of a service user and meet these
individual needs more effectively but it does not
transform the service overall – for all existing and
future users. The public administration discourse,
in contrast, has a long history of proposing ‘co-
production’ as the solution to the need for ‘social
innovation’ in public services delivery as part of
the reform process of these services (Dibben and
Bartlett, 2001; Hartley, 2005; Joyce, 1998). This
invariably implies the involvement of service users
in the service planning process through mecha-
nisms ranging from consultation to direct partici-
pation. Such strategic involvement equates to the
‘participative co-production’ mode identified
above. It does address the needs of the collectivity
rather than solely the individual but through
improving existing service deliveries rather than
challenging them.
British Journal of Management © 2013 British Academy of Management.
S. P. Osborne and K. Strokosch
Enhanced co-production offers a link between
co-production and the much sought after goal
of transformative innovation in public services
through co-creation (Mulgan, 2006). In the serv-
ices management field, Von Hippel (e.g. 1994,
2005) has made a veritable career out of prescrib-
ing and evaluating co-production as a core source
of such co-creation and transformative user-led
innovation (see also Barras, 1986; Sundbo and
Gallouj, 2000; Van der Aa and Elfring, 2002).
Such user-led innovation is dependent upon two
things. First it requires the bringing together
of the operational and strategic levels of
co-production to unlock Von Hippel’s ‘sticky’, or
tacit, knowledge that service users possess in
order to transform the service (Von Hippel, 1994).
Here, the service organization is proactively
seeking to uncover, understand and satisfy ‘latent
(future) needs’, rather than simply reacting to
(existing) expressed needs (Ordanini and Pasini,
2008; Vargo and Lusch, 2008). Second it requires
service users working together as collectivities to
support each other in the process – so that they
are not simply atomized within prevailing service
structures (Alam, 2006). As Von Hippel (2005)
has made clear, it is not simply a case of em-
powering service users and expecting them to im-
mediately begin transforming (public) services.
Enhanced co-production requires a genuine part-
nership between public service professionals and
service users that is predicated upon the use of
knowledge to transform service delivery. A key
challenge therefore is what mechanisms best
unlock this potential and how to ensure that
service professionals and service users alike have
the requisite skills to power these mechanisms.
This challenge is returned to further in the con-
clusions to this paper.
None of this implies that innovations arising
from such enhanced co-production are always
social or economic goods, of course. There are
numerous examples of failed or inappropriate
innovations in both public and private goods
(Brown and Osborne, 2013) and engaging users in
transformative innovation will not, by itself, guar-
antee the achievement of positive innovation. The
task of evaluating the risks and import of trans-
formative innovations is an entirely different one
from enabling such transformative innovation to
occur (Brown and Osborne, 2013). Enhanced
co-production is thus necessary to ensure user-led
transformative innovation can occur, but it is not
© 2013 The Author(s)
It takes Two to Tango?
sufficient to ensure that all such innovations
should occur. The latter process is a normative
one that requires political debate about what is
acceptable rather possible in a society.4
Finally, the role of information and com-
munications technology (ICT) and digital technol-
ogy is of particular consequence in relation
to enhanced co-production (Enkel, Gassmann
and Chesbrough, 2009; Moller, Rajala and
Weserlund, 2008). At a theoretical level this has led
to the influential concept of ‘open innovation’
(Chesbrough, 2003). In a public service context,
their potential to support the development of new
forms of co-production (as discussed below in rela-
tion to the custodial treatment of offenders) and to
enable service users to take an active role in
enhanced co-production has been recognized by a
number of writers (e.g. Kinder, 2000; Pascu and
van Lieshout, 2009). Dunleavy et al. (2006) (see
also Bovaird and Loeffler, 2009) have argued sub-
sequently that what they term digital era govern-
ance (DEG) offers the basis for ‘self-sustaining
change’ in public services. Dunleavy and his col-
leagues are at pains to point out that, by itself,
DEG is no guarantor of co-production, of any
form, and that professionals might yet utilize the
technology to buttress their own roles at the cost of
genuine co-production. Moreover if the impact of
DEG is actually to lead to greater fragmentation of
the public services delivery system, by encouraging
a multitude of voices, then the cost of this may be
greatly increased inefficiencies in the delivery of
public services (Peters and Pierre, 2000). Nonethe-
less, DEG does offer the potential of enhanced
co-production and co-creation by enabling more
equal access to essential information about social
and economic needs and the performance of public
services. Bekkers et al. (2011), for example, have
demonstrated how ICT and digital technology
have enabled individual service users and commu-
nities to take a more equal role in the policy plan-
ning and implementation process, and sometimes
seizing the agenda, precisely by allowing them
access to information previously in the domain of
4
As Osborne and Brown (2011) have noted, not all inno-
vations in public services have been considered as
socially acceptable – a classic example being the case in
the UK of ‘pin-down’ in child-care services in the 1990s.
Effective mechanisms to promote innovation in public
services must hence be balanced by political debate
about what is socially acceptable.
© 2013 The Author(s)
British Journal of Management © 2013 British Academy of Management.
S41
the professionals alone. In such a digital era, a
more nuanced understanding of the nature of
co-production and its interaction with these
emerging technologies will be essential to both
understanding and governing the process of public
services delivery and renewal.
We therefore argue that enhanced co-
production is an important conceptual develop-
ment that can enable us to address Mulgan’s call
(above) for ‘sustained and systematic analysis’ in
understanding the contribution of public service
users to innovation in public services. The frame-
work presented here, we argue, makes extant
the dimensions of this mode of co-production
and its relationship to the two existing modes
of consumer co-production and participative
co-production.
We reiterate that the conceptual clarity about
co-production offered here is no guarantee, by
itself, that the potential benefits of co-production
will always be achieved. Such normative intent is
not implicit in this paper. However, we argue that
this clarity will both offer more nuanced analysis
and evaluation of the impacts of co-production
upon public service delivery and effectiveness and
offer guidance to public service planners, manag-
ers and users about the potential and limitations
of co-production in public services delivery – and
thence allow them to consider how best to opti-
mize its positive impact upon these services.
The limitations of enhanced co-production.
Unsurprisingly, given its potential as a powerful
engine of public services reform and innovation,
there are also barriers to the potential of such
enhanced co-production and user-led innovation.
First, PSOs are typically highly professionalized
and may be resistant to accepting the actual
premise of enhanced co-production or its chal-
lenges to their own professionalism (Bovaird and
Loeffler, 2003; Osborne, 1994). Second, simply
establishing mechanisms through which to
involve service users in service planning and pro-
duction does not guarantee the enhanced mode of
co-production. A PSO can take an active, passive
or even tokenistic approach to responding to
these mechanisms (Sinclair, 2004). Users them-
selves can also often be conservative in their
approach, preferring to retain existing modes of
service delivery rather than risk the loss of a
service through innovation. Both these issues can
limit the innovative potential of PSOs.
S42
Finally there are also limits to the positive
potential of innovation through co-production.
As discussed above, providing individuals with
too much power in the production of public serv-
ices has been argued to lead to inefficiencies in
public spending (Peters and Pierre, 2000), whilst
Alam (2006) argues that over-customization in
service innovation at the individual level leads to
service fragmentation and inefficiency.
Discussion
To date the three modes of individual
co-production detailed here have not been made
explicit or clearly differentiated in the discussion
about the planning and delivery of public services.
Our contention is that the appreciation of
co-production and its potential benefits in this
context are improved significantly by their
differentiation. We also argue that combining
the insights for public administration and ser-
vices management has produced powerful new
concepts to help us analyse and evaluate this
phenomenon.
Inevitably, any such conceptual approach is
subject to its own limitations. We have already
discussed the specific barriers to user-led innova-
tion above. In addition we argue that there are
four broader limitations to co-production that
must be taken into account in considering the
implementation issues of these three modes of
co-production. First, just as service users bring
important expertise to co-production so too do
service professionals. Co-production is not about
the replacement of the role of professionals by
service users (as in some of the more naïve ver-
sions of public services consumerism discussed by
Powell et al. (2010) and Jung (2010)). Rather it is
about bringing these different forms of expertise
together. To take a simple example, one would
not want to replace the role of the surgeon by the
patient in the co-production of oncology services
– the professional expertise of the former group is
vital here. However, the research has also indi-
cated the significance to clinical outcomes of the
co-production of the overall treatment plan and
its implementation between health professionals
and patients (Katz et al., 2005; see also
Guadognoli and Ward, 1998).
Second there are inevitably cases where the user
of a public service is an unwilling or coerced user.
British Journal of Management © 2013 British Academy of Management.
S. P. Osborne and K. Strokosch
The prison service is a classic example here. In this
context the professionals of the prison service
have a custodial function that it is hard to
co-produce. Even here, though, it has been argued
that the electronic tagging of convicted criminals
within the community is a form of co-produced
custody that negotiates the coercive element
(Corcoran, 2011). Margetts (2009) goes further
with this argument, too, suggesting that ICT and
web-enabled technologies may be a new incentive
and technology to embrace co-production – and
again citing the argument that community-based
custodial options may be one area ripe for such
digital innovation.
Third, co-production is particularly fraught
where public services, as is often the case, can
have multiple and perhaps conflictual users. In the
above case of custodial prison services, for
example, it is a moot point who the actual service
user is – the convicted criminals themselves, or the
court, victims of crime, or society more broadly.
This dilemma is highlighted particularly by
Bovaird (2005). Such contestation is not a reason
to limit the role of co-production in public serv-
ices, but rather it is a reason perhaps to acknowl-
edge its greater complexity in public services than
in the business sector. Tools to negotiate such
conflictual situations in public services do exist,
such as stakeholder approaches (e.g. Bryson,
2004).
Finally, substantive empowerment, participa-
tion and user-led innovation through
co-production are all reliant on the presence of
trust in the service relationship – because the
process of co-production can be risky, uncertain,
time-consuming and costly for PSOs (Yang,
2006). Service professionals and planners must
trust that they will receive some return from
co-production, whilst service users must trust that
their contributions will be recognized, valued and
acted upon.
Developing such trust has of course been a sub-
stantive challenge for PSOs for many decades
(Van de Walle and Bouckaert, 2003). Tools to
assist in the process of this development do exist
in the services management literature, however,
such as relationship marketing (Sheth and
Parvatiyar, 2000), and some have already
explored their application to public services (e.g.
McLaughlin, Osborne and Chew, 2009). Without
such application, the risks of co-production may
undermine the trust essential to its enactment –
© 2013 The Author(s)
It takes Two to Tango?
and ultimately counter its benefits in the imple-
mentation process. The implications of this need
further exploration.
Conclusions
We have argued for a significant contribution to
the theoretical debate around the nature of
co-production in public services, by integrating
insights from two distinct theoretical perspectives
(public administration and services management)
that have previously existed in isolation. This has
import for public management theory, for public
policy and for public services management.
Implications for public management theory
We have enhanced the clarity of our appreciation
of co-production and allowed the evolution of a
substantial conceptual development in our under-
standing of co-production – an analytical frame-
work of three modes of co-production. This
framework allows for much greater clarity in dis-
cussing the co-production of public services and
has enabled its disaggregation from one larger,
somewhat vague, concept into separate conceptu-
ally rigorous elements. This has clarified both the
distinction and inter-relationship between indi-
vidual and collective co-production and the extent
to which co-production can either improve the
existing mechanisms and processes of public serv-
ices delivery or challenge them (though user-led,
transformative, innovation). It has also allowed
us to discuss some of the limitations and barriers
to the achievement of co-production in practice,
as well as suggesting some approaches to the reso-
lution of these issues.
The services management perspective improves
our understanding of the nature of the
co-production of public services by individual
service users, by providing a more accurate
description of the service production process at an
operational level. It helps us to understand the
inherent role of co-production in the delivery of
any service – public or private – and its links to
user empowerment. The public administration
literature, by contrast, provides insight into
co-production at the strategic, service planning,
level. It helps us understand how this can be
linked to individual and community participation
in the planning of public services (and its limita-
© 2013 The Author(s)
British Journal of Management © 2013 British Academy of Management.
S43
tions). Finally, we have taken the analysis a step
further by integrating the insights from these two
perspectives in order to advance the concept of
enhanced co-production. This new conceptual
category draws on both the above perspectives
and provides insights into the processes and con-
tingencies of user-led innovation as a process of
public services innovation and reform.
Implications for public policy and for public
services management
As it stands this framework is, we believe, an
important contribution to theory. As with all
good public administration and public manage-
ment theory, though, it is one with the potential
to make a significant contribution to practice
(Andrews and Boyne, 2010; Head, 2010). We
draw out four implications here. First, it is no
longer permissible for public policy-makers or for
public service professionals simply to argue for
‘co-production’ as some holy grail for all the ills of
current public services delivery or as a novel way
to provide public services at less cost in a time of
austerity. We have explored three different modes
of co-production, together with their limitations.
Greater clarity over what public policy or a spe-
cific public service is trying to achieve through
co-production can only enhance the effectiveness
of reforms designed with this in mind.
Second, it is not realistic to expect that simply
tasking service users with enhanced co-
production will automatically lead to trans-
formative innovation. As the literature on such
innovation in the private sector has made clear,
service users require support to move from the
articulation of individual needs to collective and
service level needs (e.g. Alam, 2006; Von Hippel,
2005). This includes both designing forums predi-
cated upon a lead role for users (rather than
simply upon consulting them) and supporting the
development of their skills subsequently to engage
successfully in these forums. These issues have
been addressed in different contexts for public
services (e.g. Crosby, 2010; Crosby and Bryson,
2005; Huxham, 2003). These insights now need
application to the co-production of public services
in its different modes.
Third, this debate on co-production opens up a
wider debate for public policy-makers and service
delivery professionals. As has been argued by
one of these authors elsewhere (Osborne, 2010;
S44
Osborne, Radnor and Nasi, 2013), public services
delivery over the past two decades has been domi-
nated by approaches (often under the rubric of the
NPM) that have consistently treated public serv-
ices as if they were manufactured goods rather
than services. This has led to a focus on design
and performance evaluation rather than upon the
significance of knowledge transformation and of
the process of service delivery. It has also encour-
aged public service reform strategies that have
been introspective and sought to increase internal
efficiency whilst ignoring the core issue of external
effectiveness (Radnor and Osborne, 2013). This
has been despite a significant services manage-
ment and service dominant literature that
explores these issues in a private sector context
and which has been discussed extensively above
(Osborne, Radnor and Nasi, 2013). The present
paper has demonstrated the utility of this services
literature for public policy making and public
services. It is long overdue for this wider contri-
bution to be recognized and acted upon in a
public service context.
Finally, none of the above should be taken to
negate the need for political debate about what
forms of co-production and social innovation are
socially acceptable. This is the arena in which to
decide, for example, whether the tagging of
offenders to co-produce custodial sentences in the
community is socially acceptable, just as it was to
decide that ‘pin down’ in the 1990s was a socially
unacceptable form of innovation in child-care
services.
Co-production: a research agenda
The next challenge is surely for empirical research
to test and refine this framework and its contribu-
tion to public administration and public manage-
ment theory. This will require its further
clarification as a set of testable propositions. A
range of methodologies exist that can drive
forward this empirical testing and refinement
including experimentation (Margetts, 2011), the
analysis of administrative data (Andrews,
Boyne and Walker, 2011), ethnographic study
(Huby, Harris and Grant, 2011) and longitudinal
research (Wond and Macaulay, 2011). Inter alia,
key issues for the research agenda include
• testing and refining the conceptualization of
co-production provided here across a range of
British Journal of Management © 2013 British Academy of Management.
S. P. Osborne and K. Strokosch
areas of public service delivery in order to
clarify the extent to which it is a general model
or to which there are industry-specific issues to
be taken into account;
• in particular, exploring the boundaries of the
service user and citizen roles, the extent to
which they are mutually dependent, and their
implications for the nature of co-production;5
• evaluating a range of public policy and public
service delivery options for facilitating the dif-
ferent modes of co-production identified here,
to identify and consider their contingencies;
• exploring the implications of unwilling, coerced
and multiple service users for this framework;
• similarly, considering the range of relationships
that a user might have with their service over
time (some public services may be used continu-
ously whilst others may require periodic or spo-
radic usage) and the implications of this for the
nature of co-production;
• examining the contribution that ICT and digital
technology can make to the practice of
co-production;
• scrutinizing specific cases where co-production
has failed or proved difficult to facilitate in
order to clarify its limitations; and
• assessing the key skills that policy-makers,
service professionals and service users require to
optimize the potential for co-production, as
well as the range of mechanisms for enabling the
development of these skills.
Only once such an agenda has been pursued will
the full utility, and limitations, of this new frame-
work be clearly elucidated.
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